“It’s an independent filter and recommendation,” says Magnesia Litera organiser, Pavel Mandys

by Pavel Mandys & David Zábranský

8. 6. 2016

DZ: What is the mission of the Magnesia Litera prize?
PM: To promote high-quality Czech books, both to Czech readers and abroad. Its purpose is in no way different from that of any other national literary award in Europe and the rest of the world.

Where did the inspiration come from? What foreign prize is the Litera comparable with?
We didn’t take any foreign prize as a direct model, it’s more a combination of various awards, and not only from the book trade. If we wanted to be up there with the big Czech annual awards from other artistic disciplines (the Czech Lion for films, the Thálie for theatre, the Angel for popular music) and get Czech Television to broadcast an awards ceremony, we had to introduce a higher number of categories than is customary with literary prizes. At the same time, this enabled us to focus not only on fiction, which is the traditional award-winning form, but also on other branches of the book trade: i.e. children’s books, non-fiction and translation. We probably have the most in common with the National Book Awards in America, where they also announce nominations in several different categories.

Where does the Litera stand in relation to other Czech literary prizes?
When we were devising the award, we wanted to concentrate mainly on recent work. There have been and still are Czech prizes which reward authors for their life’s work: the Jaroslav Seifert Prize, the Karel Čapek Prize and the State Prize for literature. That’s why we set up the Magnesia Litera as an annual prize which looks back over one calendar year. In the meantime other prizes have come into being which have the same focus, but they don’t have such a strong production and marketing background, so they don’t have the same reach among the Czech public.

What kind of response has there been to it abroad?
I couldn’t really say – I only follow it sporadically. In general, I think that awarding a major national prize can help to attract interest from foreign publishers. But before a book is actually published, there are many other factors which play a role: for example, whether and how the Czech state is willing to support the publishing of more challenging literature abroad.

What categories are prizes awarded in, and why?
We have eight statutory categories: Litera for Publishing Achievement, Litera for Translation, Litera for Non-Fiction, Litera for Discovery of the Year, Litera for Books for Children and Young Adults, Litera for Poetry, Litera for Prose, and the Magnesia Litera – Book of the Year, which can be won by any book from the previous five categories. We also announce a readers’ prize, where they vote for an original work of Czech literature, and since last year a prize for the best blog. The aim is to cover as wide as possible an area of the book market and literary output.

Does winning a Litera affect sales? If so, how?
Every year we follow up on how the winning books have fared, and since 2009 at the latest they have been doing very well in bookshops and have become bestsellers: in the Czech Republic the threshold beyond which a book is considered a bestseller is 10,000 copies, and all the winning books have exceeded that in the last six years – with the exception of one, where the publishers somewhat missed the boat. The number of copies sold also increases manifold for books which have “only” won one of the genre categories, most often with winners in the category of prose (which are not always the outright winners) and children’s books.

Why should foreign publishers pay attention to the winning books?
In the Czech Republic around 16,000 new books are published annually, both original works and translations. And qualified people from the book trade have made a discerning selection of those which they think are out of the ordinary in some way. In its own way it is an independent filter and recommendation. After that, it’s obviously up to them whether they are interested in the book or not, whether it’s suitable for the relevant foreign market. But they don’t have to go through dozens of works, only the eight winning ones, or maybe another 16 which were nominated.

 
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Pavel Mandys (b. 1972) is Literary and film publicist. He graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague (journalism and mass communications). Since 1991 he has published in newspapers and magazines (Mladý svět, MF Dnes, Český deník, Lidové noviny). In 2001 he co-founded the Litera civic association, which organises the annual Magnesia Litera awards.